The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past day
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Show HN: Svader – Create GPU-rendered Svelte components
Svader is a library for rendering 2D shaders on Svelte websites, using either WebGL or WebGPU.<p>It's streamlined for the specific use case of rendering 2D graphics using fragment shaders as an alternative to SVG or the JS canvas API, so it's not meant for doing 3D objects like three.js, for example.<p>This started as something I needed for my own project, but I eventually decided to split it into a separate library. I've since found that this use case fits really well into the Svelte compiler-based approach and its fine-grained reactivity system.<p>In general, I think using shaders like these has some really positive upsides compared to traditional ways of doing graphics on the web — not just for games and stuff, but also for something like data visualizations and aesthetic details. My dream is that one day, you'll see web developers using small, isolated shader components ubiquitously across web applications, just as naturally as something like SVGs are used today.
Show HN: Svader – Create GPU-rendered Svelte components
Svader is a library for rendering 2D shaders on Svelte websites, using either WebGL or WebGPU.<p>It's streamlined for the specific use case of rendering 2D graphics using fragment shaders as an alternative to SVG or the JS canvas API, so it's not meant for doing 3D objects like three.js, for example.<p>This started as something I needed for my own project, but I eventually decided to split it into a separate library. I've since found that this use case fits really well into the Svelte compiler-based approach and its fine-grained reactivity system.<p>In general, I think using shaders like these has some really positive upsides compared to traditional ways of doing graphics on the web — not just for games and stuff, but also for something like data visualizations and aesthetic details. My dream is that one day, you'll see web developers using small, isolated shader components ubiquitously across web applications, just as naturally as something like SVGs are used today.
Show HN: Svader – Create GPU-rendered Svelte components
Svader is a library for rendering 2D shaders on Svelte websites, using either WebGL or WebGPU.<p>It's streamlined for the specific use case of rendering 2D graphics using fragment shaders as an alternative to SVG or the JS canvas API, so it's not meant for doing 3D objects like three.js, for example.<p>This started as something I needed for my own project, but I eventually decided to split it into a separate library. I've since found that this use case fits really well into the Svelte compiler-based approach and its fine-grained reactivity system.<p>In general, I think using shaders like these has some really positive upsides compared to traditional ways of doing graphics on the web — not just for games and stuff, but also for something like data visualizations and aesthetic details. My dream is that one day, you'll see web developers using small, isolated shader components ubiquitously across web applications, just as naturally as something like SVGs are used today.
Show HN: Svader – Create GPU-rendered Svelte components
Svader is a library for rendering 2D shaders on Svelte websites, using either WebGL or WebGPU.<p>It's streamlined for the specific use case of rendering 2D graphics using fragment shaders as an alternative to SVG or the JS canvas API, so it's not meant for doing 3D objects like three.js, for example.<p>This started as something I needed for my own project, but I eventually decided to split it into a separate library. I've since found that this use case fits really well into the Svelte compiler-based approach and its fine-grained reactivity system.<p>In general, I think using shaders like these has some really positive upsides compared to traditional ways of doing graphics on the web — not just for games and stuff, but also for something like data visualizations and aesthetic details. My dream is that one day, you'll see web developers using small, isolated shader components ubiquitously across web applications, just as naturally as something like SVGs are used today.
Show HN: Open-sourcing my failed startup Buzee – A file search application
Buzee is a file search application that helps you find your files effortlessly.<p>As a modern-day knowledge worker, I have several thousand documents, presentations and other files on my computer. I built Buzee in my free time to help me weave my way through this maze. I have been using it pretty much everyday since the day I built it - and I love it!<p>I thought I could turn Buzee into a startup. I reached out to offices and helped set it up for them. But it didn't pan out.<p>I am now letting go of this project because I have other priorities in life.<p>Please feel free to do with this project as you wish. I am happy to help you get started with the codebase.<p>Do share what you build. I would love to see it!<p>Cheers
Show HN: Open-sourcing my failed startup Buzee – A file search application
Buzee is a file search application that helps you find your files effortlessly.<p>As a modern-day knowledge worker, I have several thousand documents, presentations and other files on my computer. I built Buzee in my free time to help me weave my way through this maze. I have been using it pretty much everyday since the day I built it - and I love it!<p>I thought I could turn Buzee into a startup. I reached out to offices and helped set it up for them. But it didn't pan out.<p>I am now letting go of this project because I have other priorities in life.<p>Please feel free to do with this project as you wish. I am happy to help you get started with the codebase.<p>Do share what you build. I would love to see it!<p>Cheers
Show HN: Open-sourcing my failed startup Buzee – A file search application
Buzee is a file search application that helps you find your files effortlessly.<p>As a modern-day knowledge worker, I have several thousand documents, presentations and other files on my computer. I built Buzee in my free time to help me weave my way through this maze. I have been using it pretty much everyday since the day I built it - and I love it!<p>I thought I could turn Buzee into a startup. I reached out to offices and helped set it up for them. But it didn't pan out.<p>I am now letting go of this project because I have other priorities in life.<p>Please feel free to do with this project as you wish. I am happy to help you get started with the codebase.<p>Do share what you build. I would love to see it!<p>Cheers
Show HN: Rain hashes – well designed, simple and fast variable sized hashes
Show HN: I made the slowest, most expensive GPT
This is another one of my automate-my-life projects - I'm constantly asking the same question to different AIs since there's always the hope of getting a better answer somewhere else. Maybe ChatGPT's answer is too short, so I ask Perplexity. But I realize that's hallucinated, so I try Gemini. That answer sounds right, but I cross-reference with Claude just to make sure.<p>This doesn't really apply to math/coding (where o1 or Gemini can probably one-shot an excellent response), but more to online search, where information is more fluid and there's no "right" search engine + text restructuring + model combination every time. Even o1 doesn't have online search, so it's obviously a hard problem to solve.<p>An example is something like "best ski resorts in the US", which will get a different response from every GPT, but most of their rankings won't reflect actual skiers' consensus - say, on Reddit <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/skiing/comments/sew297/updated_us_ski_areas_tier_list_v3_128_please" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/skiing/comments/sew297/updated_us_s...</a> - because there's so many opinions floating around, a one-shot RAG search + LLM isn't going to have enough context to find how everyone thinks. And obviously, offline GPTs like o1 and Sonnet/Haiku aren't going to have the latest updates if a resort closes for example.<p>So I’ve spent the last few months experimenting with a new project that's basically the most expensive GPT I’ll ever run. It runs search queries through ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Perplexity, Gemini, etc., then aggregates the responses. For added financial tragedy, in-between it also uses multiple embedding models and performs iterative RAG searches through different search engines. This all functions as sort of like one giant AI brain. So I pay for every search, then every embedding, then every intermediary LLM input/output, then the final LLM input/output. On average it costs about 10 to 30 cents per search. It's also extremely slow.<p><a href="https://ithy.com" rel="nofollow">https://ithy.com</a><p>I know that sounds absurdly overkill, but that’s kind of the point. The goal is to get the most accurate and comprehensive answer possible, because it's been vetted by a bunch of different AIs, each sourcing from different buckets of websites. Context limits today are just large enough that this type of search and cross-model iteration is possible, where we can determine the "overlap" between a diverse set of text to determine some sort of consensus. The idea is to get online answers that aren't attainable from any single AI. If you end up trying this out, I'd recommend comparing Ithy's output against the other GPTs to see the difference.<p>It's going to cost me a fortune to run this project (I'll probably keep it online for a month or two), but I see it as an exploration of what’s possible with today’s model APIs, rather than something that’s immediately practical. Think of it as an online o1 (without the $200/month price tag, though I'm offering a $29/month Pro plan to help subsidize). If nothing else, it’s a fun (and pricey) thought experiment.
Show HN: @smoores/epub, a JavaScript library for working with EPUB publications
Howdy! I've just written a blog post about this, and I figured I would share it here: <a href="https://smoores.dev/post/announcing_smoores_epub/" rel="nofollow">https://smoores.dev/post/announcing_smoores_epub/</a>. As I've been working on Storyteller[1], I've been developing a library for working with EPUB files, since that's a large amount of the work that Storyteller does. After a friend asked for advice on creating EPUB books in Node.js, I decided to publish Storyteller's EPUB library as a standalone NPM package. I really love the EPUB spec, and I think the Node.js developer community deserves an actively maintained library for working with it!<p>[1]: <a href="https://smoores.gitlab.io/storyteller" rel="nofollow">https://smoores.gitlab.io/storyteller</a>
Show HN: @smoores/epub, a JavaScript library for working with EPUB publications
Howdy! I've just written a blog post about this, and I figured I would share it here: <a href="https://smoores.dev/post/announcing_smoores_epub/" rel="nofollow">https://smoores.dev/post/announcing_smoores_epub/</a>. As I've been working on Storyteller[1], I've been developing a library for working with EPUB files, since that's a large amount of the work that Storyteller does. After a friend asked for advice on creating EPUB books in Node.js, I decided to publish Storyteller's EPUB library as a standalone NPM package. I really love the EPUB spec, and I think the Node.js developer community deserves an actively maintained library for working with it!<p>[1]: <a href="https://smoores.gitlab.io/storyteller" rel="nofollow">https://smoores.gitlab.io/storyteller</a>
Show HN: @smoores/epub, a JavaScript library for working with EPUB publications
Howdy! I've just written a blog post about this, and I figured I would share it here: <a href="https://smoores.dev/post/announcing_smoores_epub/" rel="nofollow">https://smoores.dev/post/announcing_smoores_epub/</a>. As I've been working on Storyteller[1], I've been developing a library for working with EPUB files, since that's a large amount of the work that Storyteller does. After a friend asked for advice on creating EPUB books in Node.js, I decided to publish Storyteller's EPUB library as a standalone NPM package. I really love the EPUB spec, and I think the Node.js developer community deserves an actively maintained library for working with it!<p>[1]: <a href="https://smoores.gitlab.io/storyteller" rel="nofollow">https://smoores.gitlab.io/storyteller</a>
Show HN: @smoores/epub, a JavaScript library for working with EPUB publications
Howdy! I've just written a blog post about this, and I figured I would share it here: <a href="https://smoores.dev/post/announcing_smoores_epub/" rel="nofollow">https://smoores.dev/post/announcing_smoores_epub/</a>. As I've been working on Storyteller[1], I've been developing a library for working with EPUB files, since that's a large amount of the work that Storyteller does. After a friend asked for advice on creating EPUB books in Node.js, I decided to publish Storyteller's EPUB library as a standalone NPM package. I really love the EPUB spec, and I think the Node.js developer community deserves an actively maintained library for working with it!<p>[1]: <a href="https://smoores.gitlab.io/storyteller" rel="nofollow">https://smoores.gitlab.io/storyteller</a>
Show HN: Imposter Attack – Among Us-themed infrared game made with ESP32
Show HN: Imposter Attack – Among Us-themed infrared game made with ESP32
Show HN: Imposter Attack – Among Us-themed infrared game made with ESP32
Show HN: Imposter Attack – Among Us-themed infrared game made with ESP32
Show HN: Imposter Attack – Among Us-themed infrared game made with ESP32
Show HN: I designed an espresso machine and coffee grinder
It was a lot of work as a solo project but I hope you guys think it’s cool. When I say “we” in the website it’s only in the most royal sense possible. I also did all the photo/videography. I started out designing a single machine for personal use, but like many things it sort of spiraled out of control from there.<p>I felt like espresso machines were getting very large, plasticky, and app-integrated without actually improving the underlying technologies that make them work. The noisy vibratory pumps in particular are from 1977 and haven’t really changed since then. So I wanted to focus on making the most advanced internals I could and leaving everything else as minimalist as possible. The pump is, as far as I know, completely unique in terms of power density and price. Without spending several thousand dollars, it was difficult to find a machine with a gear pump, and adjustable pressure was also similarly expensive but this machine has those things and costs a normal amount to buy. You can also turn the pressure way down and make filter coffee.<p>I also saw so many people (including myself) using a scale while making espresso, and even putting a cup below the group head to catch drips, entirely negating the drip tray, so I basically designed for that! The profile of the machine is much lighter on the eyes and doesn’t loom in the corner like my old espresso machine did.<p>And for the grinder, basically everything on the market uses conical and flat burrs that have descended from spice grinders, and the same couple of standard sizes. Sometimes larger companies design their own burrs, but only within those existing shapes. There is sort of a rush to put larger and larger burrs into coffee grinders, which makes sense, but with cylindrical burrs, you can increase the cutting surface way more relative to the size of the grinder. When grinders get too big, maintaining alignment becomes mechanically cumbersome, but the cylindrical burr can be very well supported from the inside, and there is the added benefit of hiding the entire motor within the burr itself. The resulting grounds are just outright better than all the other grinders I have used, but obviously this is a matter of taste and my own personal bias.<p>The biggest downside for the grinder is that it doesn’t work with starbucks style oily roasts, because the coffee expands so much while traveling down through the burrs and can sometimes clog up the teeth. It doesn’t hurt the grinder but it does require cleaning (which is tool-free!). Another downside for both machines is the fact that they run on DC power so it’s best if you have a spot in your kitchen to tuck away the power brick.<p>I also made a kit that makes the gear pump a drop-in upgrade for other espresso machines, to reduce noise and add adjustable pressure.<p><a href="https://velofuso.com/store/p/gear-pump-upgrade-kit" rel="nofollow">https://velofuso.com/store/p/gear-pump-upgrade-kit</a><p>The roughest part of this process were the moments midway through development where they weren’t working at all. When the grinder is just jamming itself instantly or the fourth factory in a row tells you the part you’re making is impossible or the pump is alternating between spraying water out the side and into your face and not pumping at all. And the default thought is “Of course it’s not working, if this was going to work someone else would have already made it like this”. The route you’ve taken is fundamentally different enough that there are no existing solutions to draw on. You’re basically feeling around in the dark for months on end, burning money, and then one day, every little cumulative change suddenly adds up to a tasty espresso. And it’s not perfect yet, but you at least can see the road ahead.<p>Anyways, this is way more than I expected to write, thank you for reading! Tell me if you have any questions
Show HN: I designed an espresso machine and coffee grinder
It was a lot of work as a solo project but I hope you guys think it’s cool. When I say “we” in the website it’s only in the most royal sense possible. I also did all the photo/videography. I started out designing a single machine for personal use, but like many things it sort of spiraled out of control from there.<p>I felt like espresso machines were getting very large, plasticky, and app-integrated without actually improving the underlying technologies that make them work. The noisy vibratory pumps in particular are from 1977 and haven’t really changed since then. So I wanted to focus on making the most advanced internals I could and leaving everything else as minimalist as possible. The pump is, as far as I know, completely unique in terms of power density and price. Without spending several thousand dollars, it was difficult to find a machine with a gear pump, and adjustable pressure was also similarly expensive but this machine has those things and costs a normal amount to buy. You can also turn the pressure way down and make filter coffee.<p>I also saw so many people (including myself) using a scale while making espresso, and even putting a cup below the group head to catch drips, entirely negating the drip tray, so I basically designed for that! The profile of the machine is much lighter on the eyes and doesn’t loom in the corner like my old espresso machine did.<p>And for the grinder, basically everything on the market uses conical and flat burrs that have descended from spice grinders, and the same couple of standard sizes. Sometimes larger companies design their own burrs, but only within those existing shapes. There is sort of a rush to put larger and larger burrs into coffee grinders, which makes sense, but with cylindrical burrs, you can increase the cutting surface way more relative to the size of the grinder. When grinders get too big, maintaining alignment becomes mechanically cumbersome, but the cylindrical burr can be very well supported from the inside, and there is the added benefit of hiding the entire motor within the burr itself. The resulting grounds are just outright better than all the other grinders I have used, but obviously this is a matter of taste and my own personal bias.<p>The biggest downside for the grinder is that it doesn’t work with starbucks style oily roasts, because the coffee expands so much while traveling down through the burrs and can sometimes clog up the teeth. It doesn’t hurt the grinder but it does require cleaning (which is tool-free!). Another downside for both machines is the fact that they run on DC power so it’s best if you have a spot in your kitchen to tuck away the power brick.<p>I also made a kit that makes the gear pump a drop-in upgrade for other espresso machines, to reduce noise and add adjustable pressure.<p><a href="https://velofuso.com/store/p/gear-pump-upgrade-kit" rel="nofollow">https://velofuso.com/store/p/gear-pump-upgrade-kit</a><p>The roughest part of this process were the moments midway through development where they weren’t working at all. When the grinder is just jamming itself instantly or the fourth factory in a row tells you the part you’re making is impossible or the pump is alternating between spraying water out the side and into your face and not pumping at all. And the default thought is “Of course it’s not working, if this was going to work someone else would have already made it like this”. The route you’ve taken is fundamentally different enough that there are no existing solutions to draw on. You’re basically feeling around in the dark for months on end, burning money, and then one day, every little cumulative change suddenly adds up to a tasty espresso. And it’s not perfect yet, but you at least can see the road ahead.<p>Anyways, this is way more than I expected to write, thank you for reading! Tell me if you have any questions